The judicial pursuit of the sexual victimization of children

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-144
Author(s):  
Josep M Tamarit Sumalla ◽  
Mª Jesús Guardiola Lago ◽  
Albert Padró-Solanet ◽  
Patricia Hernández-Hidalgo

This article analyses the criminal justice system’s treatment of those sexual offences against children of which it is made aware. The findings reported in this article draw on a quantitative study based on data ( n = 97) taken from judicial files from a province of Catalonia, Spain. The study examines prosecution, trial and conviction rates, analysing the possible variables involved to provide a better understanding of the reasons behind the successful prosecution of complaints made. The study points to a low rate of prosecution, similar to other studies carried out in English-speaking countries. This leads us to conclude that differences in legal systems do not give rise to significant differences in dealing with cases. There is no evidence that a legalistic system such as that of Spain acts as a restraining element against the influence of non-legal factors in the judicial decision-making process. However, similarities with other studies are not found with regards to some factors associated with it. The findings provide no confirmation of the hypothesis that the Spanish criminal justice system is particularly reluctant to prosecute cases of intrafamilial victimization.

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (8) ◽  
pp. 1167-1181
Author(s):  
Laura M. Henderson

AbstractThe cases challenging the European Stability Mechanism in Eurozone creditor states show the concern courts have with protecting and promoting democratic contestation. This Article shows how John Hart Ely’s theory of process-based review provides the theoretical basis for understanding how attention to democratic contestation contributes to the legitimacy of courts reviewing legislation against constitutional norms. By focusing on promoting democratic procedures, Ely argues that courts can avoid substantive decisions that are best left to the legislature. Yet, as my discussion of the constitutional theory of constituent and constituted powers shows, no form of constituted power can avoid some exercise of constituent power. In other words, even a process-based approach cannot avoid substantive judgments. The legitimacy of these decisions depends on the availability of avenues for contestation in the judicial decision-making process itself.


Author(s):  
Hoolo 'Nyane

The contribution is the review published by former Deputy Chief Justice, Dikhang Moseneke, about his illustrious 15-year term in the Constitutional Court as both the judge and Deputy Chief Justice. The book uniquely provides a rare window into the dynamics of judicial decision-making at the apex court. Often, legal academics only interact with the judiciary through the judgements. Yet, Moseneke gives the reader much more to the judicial decision-making process than just the judgements. The book further traverses one of the most controversial aspects of the Constitutional Court’s jurisprudence, such as same-sex marriages, succession to chieftainship.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Byron Villagómez Moncayo

The involvement of the criminal justice system in immigration control is nowadays a global phenomenon that has called the attention of academics and practitioners. The Spanish legal regime has not been immune to this occurrence, encompassing a series of situations in which criminal courts are required to make decisions that can have significant implications upon immigration law enforcement. One of the most noteworthy provisions in this regard is that by which criminal courts are allowed to exercise discretionary prosecution to authorise the administrative expulsion of a prosecuted foreigner (Art. 57.7 Aliens Act). Drawing on focused observation of a court setting and semi-structured interviews with judges, prosecutors, clerks, court personnel and defence attorneys, the main findings of this paper hover around the idea that expulsion is a court’s culturally constructed punishment, defined more by the meanings attributed to it by court actors than by its formal legal categorisation.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md. Abdul Malek

<p><i>Although the apparent hyperbole about the promises of AI algorithms has successfully entered upon the judicial precincts; it has also procreated some robust concerns spanning from unfairness, privacy invasion, bias, discrimination, and the lack of legitimacy</i><i> to the lack of transparency</i><i> and explainability</i><i>, </i><i>etc.</i><i> Notably, critics have already denounced </i><i>the current use of the </i><i>predictive algorithm in the judicial decision-making process in many ways, and branded them as ethically, legally, and technically distressing.</i><i> So contextually, whereas there is already an ongoing transparency debate on board, this paper attempts to revisit, extend and contribute to such simmering debate with a particular focus from a judicial perspective. Since there is a good cause to preserve and promote trust and confidence in the judiciary as a whole, a searchlight is beamed on exploring how and why justice algorithms ought to be transparent as to their outcomes, with a sufficient level of explainability, interpretability, intelligibility, and contestability. This paper also ends up delineating the tentative paths to do away with black-box effects, and suggesting the way out for the use of algorithms in the high-stake areas like the judicial settings.</i></p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Whalen-Bridge

Unrepresented parties in litigation struggle with legal doctrine and puzzle over procedure. Judges provide some assistance in court, but they must exercise restraint so as not to raise questions of bias or favouritism. How do judges manage these interactions in the decision-making process? This article examines sample cases from one common law jurisdiction, Singapore, to identify the litigant in person (LIP) typologies in court-LIP interactions. There are likely a number of typologies that guide a court’s assessment and response to an LIP, but this article focuses on the typologies most relevant to judicial decision-making on legal issues, legal knowledge and credibility. Because legal knowledge and credibility typologies help courts evaluate LIPs, they assist courts to make decisions regarding unrepresented parties and allow cases to proceed to judgment. However, the typologies are not able to completely address the deficiencies LIPs bring to the dispute resolution process.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-80
Author(s):  
Renata Bolzan Renata Bolzan Jauris ◽  
◽  
Luiz Fernando Bellinetti ◽  

This paper explores the possibility of applying structuring injunctions in Brazilian civil procedural law. Utilizing literature review, this study explores whether the Brazilian, constitutional and infraconstitutional normative system is apt for the adoption of structuring injunctions without contradicting or affronting the current legal system. To this end, this article analyzes the constitutional principles of access to justice, the division of state functions, as well as the principles of demand and correlation. It also studies legislative innovations of the Brazilian Code of Civil Procedure of 2015, specifically the general procedural clauses and the principle of collaboration. This study then goes on to study article 21 of the Law of Introduction to Norms of Brazilian Law, which adopts explicitly the use of structural measures in the judicial decision-making process.


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